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Apple: Losing Out On Talent and In Need of a Killer New Device (theguardian.com)
mspohr writes with a link to an interesting (and rather dour) take at The Guardian on the state of Apple, which holds that: "Despite its huge value, Silicon Valley developers are turned off by [Apple's] 'secretive, controlling' culture and its engineering is no longer seen as cutting edge." From the article: "Tellingly, Apple is no longer seen as the best place for engineers to work, according to several Silicon Valley talent recruiters. It's a trend that has been happening slowly for years – and now, in this latest tech boom, has become more acute. ... Or as Elon Musk recently put the hiring situation a little more harshly: Apple is the "Tesla graveyard." "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper. The biggest issue for programmers seems to be a high-stress culture and cult of secrecy, which contrasts sharply with office trends toward gentler management and more playful workdays."
The other Steve was what made Apple technically great
Umm... care to inform us what Apple has done marketing-wise but to claim they reinvented the wheel every time they came out with a new device?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As insane and nasty as Steve Jobs apparently was as a person, he at least seems to have had a technological vision. Which seemingly cannot be said of the current CEO, whose vision seems to extend as far as adding new Emojis to the line-up.
The sad thing is that Apple would be uniquely positioned to introduce a whole range of new technologies into the consumer marketplace. On their devices, they control the entire technology stack: from hardware to software, it is all theirs. And they are the only player who has this sort of position that allows paradigm shifts to be done in-house.
For instance, they would be the only ones who could, conceivably, do a seamless job of integrating HDR into the user experience. Or WGD (Wide Gamut Displays). The latter would be particularly cool: if you are capable of doing something like a Retina display with its minuscule pixels, there is nothing that limits you to good old RGB anymore. Make it RGCB (Red Green Cyan Blue), or R/YG/BG/C/B/P (Red Yellow-Green Blue-Green Cyan Blue Purple - perhaps in some hexagonal pixel arrangement). And watch people swoon when they see the colours such displays can show. Purple and blue flowers, plants, sunsets, skies - all suddenly look vastly more natural than on an sRGB device. Cameras (at least SLRs) record wide gamut colours already, it is the displays that can't keep pace.
And what does Apple do? They now offer pink iPhone case options. Yeah, sure, guys. Makes me want to work for you - such vision, wow! :)
Small companies and startups tend to be more "playful". The only two things they care about are that you have the skills to do the job and you can get the work done on time. if you want to put up pictures of your family/girlfriend on your cube wall, that's OK. One trend with employers is that of "hot desking". You just go into the building, find a free desk/computer, login and start working. Then you leave at the end of the day. Others give you your own desk. Some places just give you a desk that is 1 meter wide and you are sitting side by side with ten other people. Some companies have a "no personal belongings" rule in your workspace (avoids problems with theft). Animators/artists like to surround themselves with action figures, furry toys like giant penguins or spiders, so that rule would drive them nuts. Others have recreation areas like ping-pong tables, console systems, have after-hours Chess clubs, card games, and even Yoga clubs.
If you're late in by 15 minutes because of bad traffic, they understand, so long as you make up the time. Some large corporations expected you to be in by 8am on the dot, no excuses, with the result that everyone leave at 4pm on the dot. For lunch, some companies take a dim view of you going outside/away somewhere for lunch, they expect you to use the work canteen. Other employers are located right downtown, so going to a different eatery each day is expected since they don't have their own food service. And there will be team parties every quarter. You might just get 15 minutes to eat your lunch at your desk, or you get flexitime for lunch.
Some companies dislike employees socializing outside of work, and might just send a couple of "heavies" to keep an eye on you.
With project management, you might have the freedom to view all tasks in the current sprint using Jira, and the whole team gets to decide what the objective will be. Other companies, only the producer gets to see all the tasks and hands them out one by one in no particular order.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
It just needs a device that everyone can afford and needs. Such a shame that they priced their phones way above what the majority can afford, They would be WAY more popular if they had focused on the base instead of the "Elite".
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Not sure why I am bothering to reply to an AC, but ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?
$76B in revenue and $18B in profit in the LAST QUARTER.
For a doomed company, that ain't bad. If you disagree, please point out another company that made more profit in 2016. Hint, that's rhetorical, there isn't one.
Apple may need "another killer device" to continue to grow to that predicted "1 trillion dollar company". But holy fuck, how is not going from the biggest market cap in the world to the even biggerest market cap in the world "doomed"?
...never having to say your sorry.
When the P to E is high, that means the stock is a bubble and everyone should sell. When the P to E is low, that means there's no confidence in earnings and everyone should sell. Meanwhile they are compared to Facebook's 109 P to E in a completely serious manner.
Still increasing sales of desktop computers means the non-phone side of the business is being ignored.
Moving 8 iPhones for every Windows Phone means the former is dead and the latter is a viable product.
Apple's non-iPhone revenue is comparable to Microsoft's *total* revenue. The impact to Apples revenue due to just currency fluctuations is comparable to Facebook's *total* revenue. Maybe a case could be made that that is a business in decline, but no one seems to be doing so.
Apple is doomed in the same way that Microsoft has been doomed for decades. Very profitable doom with very significant market share, but if you're not on an exponential growth trajectory then people think of you as as a stale relic.
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Apple have never really invented much. But, they have brought together technology and made it into amazing things.
The imac. It was colourful, compact, got rid of legacy ports. It was insanely great. The iPod put a Hard drive in a MP3 player, and made it easy to hold your entire music collection.... The others on the market just were shite in comparison. This was insanely great. OSX, bringing together open source Unix, with a Java JVM installed as standard, using open API's and with a GUI that was far ahead of anything at the time...... Insanely great.
But now....
Soldered in Ram - not insanely great. Non upgradeable SSD - not insanely great. no USB ports on latest macbook, and charging premium for a USB-c adapter. not insanely great. Charging $1,099 for a 2012 model laptop with 4gb ram and crappy i5-3210M processor......FFS, not insanely great.. For heaven sake, I remember Steve jobs reducing prices of models every single mac world presentation. No more.... Not insanely great.
Apple are dead. Maybe not in the financial sense - they have enough money to keep them going for decades. But, in the sense of what brought them back from the brink of bankruptcy back in 1998, they are dead and buried. I only wish Microsoft were a better company so I could switch back.
Old data is just that...old data. Apple needs to become much more price competitive if it is going to succeed in today's marketplace. Your name can only get you so far.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Apple is the "Tesla graveyard." "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple," Musk recently told a German newspaper.
It seems that whatever entity it was that possessed Steve Jobs and gave him his boundless arrogance has found a new host.
Other issues aside with displays, you know Apple doesn't make their displays, right? The only thing they had to do with "retina" was the marketing term retina. Their displays are made by LG and Samsung. Apple doesn't do any LCD or OLED research, they just buy what the display makers can sell them.
Apple is dead. I don't see them ever launching another hit like the iPhone which by all means won't be the last massive hit in the tech sector. Apple will slowly fade away. Without their (relatively low yield) dividends and the massive 218 billions in cash the stock would be pretty much worthless now.
Michael Dell is that you?
Starting with this bullshit from someone who's never worked there:
I've worked at Apple three times, starting back in 2002, and nobody ever yelled at me. VPs are too busy to go around doing that shit. As for the 60-80 hour weeks. that's a myth. We put in long hours when a deadline was close, but it was never a constant grind like that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Go ahead, dump all of your 401K savings in Apple, I dare you.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Well, let's see, Apple is a high-pressure workplace, to which people go when they cannot make it at Tesla. Wait, what???
The article is mostly based on the opinion of a single hipster jackass who felt that he was too good to apply at Apple, backed up by the opinion of a few other people who don't want to work there, and a recruiter. Note the lack of information from anyone who has actually ever worked there.
Apple vs. Tesla. They are really two different markets. Tesla is attracting engineers, because what they are producing seems something useful and world changing, while Apple products while nice, and remain to be great products. But Musk's empire Tesla, Space X, and SolarCity. are bringing grander changes to the world, Something that perhaps history will look back with fondness, on our generation and say we accomplished something. While the generation preceding this Apple was credited for the personal computer for the masses, the iPhone and iPads while wonderful technology are at best would be footnotes in history. We know about Edison and Marconi, Ford and Einstein, Jobs and Gates. Because of what they did to change the infrastructure of the world. However Apple is profiting off the infrastructure it help built, while Tesla is building a new one.
If you were to talk to your grand-kids in 30-50 years, what would you like to say to them. That you invented a slightly thinner iPhone, which would still look bulky to your grand-kid. Or that you were involved in making electric cars practical for average use, helping get us off the dependency of polluting oil, giving you cleaner air to breath, and slowing down global warming, so you have the ability for a prosperous life.
That is why Apple is now second tear for engineering. Their business is in old stuff like personal computing, the future is in green energy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There have been a lot of stories like this over the brief history of technology. IBM is a really good example. Their senior management is doing everything they can to sell off the company bit by bit while collecting money, and they still can't kill it. Microsoft is another excellent example, riding Windows and Office through to their current states. They're currently poised to pull the ultimate vendor lock-in trick with Azure and subscription software because they have loads of money to spend. Some companies, especially those with huge cash balances, can manage through transitions. Others will just keep beating money out of their cash cows for as long as possible (again, IBM is the perfect example.) Others, like Sun, end up getting bought at fire sale prices. All of the companies mentioned were absolutely dominant at one time or another. IBM is a total joke these days, but in the 70s/80s they represented the state of the art in all things computing.
Apple's problem is that they are now too consumer-focused and don't have a pipeline of expensive gadgets to sell them. Whether they'll use that huge pile of cash they have to buy into the next trend remains to be seen.
What a load of shit. How about engineers are more attracted to companies that respect a healthy work/life balance. That's it. Really. I'll come to work, bust my ass for 7-9 hours and go home, 5 days a week. You can keep your foosball, cafeterias, yoga, happy hours, . I'll take the perk where you pay me to go on vacation though.
He tripled their profits and doubled their revenue in his time there. Not Apple level perhaps but hardy incompetent.
The cover of the January 16, 2013 issue of BusinessWeek magazine has a large photo of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (now replaced by Satya Nadella) with the headline calling him "Monkey Boy". See the BusinessWeek cover in this article: Steve Ballmer Is No Longer A Monkey Boy, Says Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The BusinessWeek cover says "No More" and "Mr.", but that doesn't take much away from the fact that the magazine called Ballmer Monkey Boy -- on its cover.
Worst CEO in the United States: Quote from an article in Forbes Magazine about Steve Ballmer: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today." Another quote: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs." (May 12, 2012)
"Or maybe Apple could bring out the iTelevision."
They seem to have decided that a good set-top box is a better idea than branding the highly competitive commodity screen on the other end of the HDMI cable. What Apple TV still lacks is content. Apple is frantically trying to make the deals it will take to enable you to say, "Hey Siri! Play the X-Files Season One episodes that were directed by Joe Napolitano."
During the upcoming recession, watch for a giant entertainment industry buyout announcement.
Old data is just that...old data. Apple needs to become much more price competitive if it is going to succeed in today's marketplace. Your name can only get you so far.
Exactly. Look at all the high end products that are no longer with us because they refused to join the race to the bottom.:
Rolex watches - gone, should have made a swatch like $1.99 digital watch.
Lamborghini - too bad they didn't copy the Yugo or Ford Pinto. Now they are on the dustheap of history
Rolls Royce - A sad story. Gone out of business because they just didn't realize that the only metric in cars is cheap.
The entire diamond industry collapsed because people know that it's just overpriced glass in those rings.
So many more examples where industry has found out that only attending to the lowest common denominator is the only path to profit. If you want cheap, buy cheap. Just don't assume that everyone does.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
He took a company with a monopoly and the world at its feet and ensured that they succeeded at nothing for a decade. Satya is working hard to change the revenue model to a sustainable flow for MS, but in doing so, he's creating enough backlash that companies are abandoning MS products. Had Ballmer had an iota of intelligence, he would have migrated MS to the subscription model when he started. At that time it likely would have succeeded and MS would have much more than doubled its revenue in his tenure.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Not quite a period there. Apple is developing a car. Whilst they are not yet competing for customers, they are competing for engineers in specialisms to do with hi-tech cars. And this article is about competing for engineers.
Apple can only go so long asking $700 for a phone with only 16 GB of non-upgradable storage.
About 6 months, until the next generation iPhone comes along. For sure there won't be a 16GB model. But don't expect the price to fall. Someone has to have the high end of the market, and Apple is very successful at being that one.
I bought a 6S. I wouldn't buy an Android other than the occasional one I have to buy for development reasons. The OS and the available apps are shit.
Microsoft has a subscription model. You buy a new version of Windows every one or two years. Except they blew that one up by constantly changing the GUI layout rather than simply polishing the fonts and theme to take advantage of higher resolutions.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
>Outside of VR
If Apple wants to put out the iReality, a high definition stereo heads-up display with 3-axis motion detection, and some decent stereo speakers, I don't care if it's an overpriced bit of shiny white plastic with an inaccessible battery. Just because it's Apple there's a good chance it'd be a significant boost for the VR market.
If Apple wants to put out iGlasses and make a Google Glass equivalent that people would actually wear, that'd be awesome too. Not because I'd wear them (they'd inevitably be overly thick white plastic with a prominent Apple logo on them...) but because the knock-offs would have to be far better than what's available today to be at all competitive, and I'd wear one of them.
Boy, that's hard. Accurate though. Take a good laptop, cripple it, make it pretty, raise the price, and you have an Apple laptop.
Don't step on the baby.
Agreed. In a nutshell, OS upgrades should not invoke learning curves.
My guess would be that until we see something from this, it is just random speculation from a business site. Given that this article is literally from a month ago and is all hearsay, well let's just put a hold on making and kind of conclusions until there some actual information, shall we?
Actually, Apple is already seeing it. Their forecast for iPhone sales is way below last year. Probably partly because people are looking for cheaper phones, and early because they are keeping their old ones longer.
Of course a lot of this has to do with the fact you can't sustain the growth of a high end product like the iPhone once you have already reached all of those who can afford it; the new customers are going to have to start coming from countries and income classes that just can't afford a $600 phone.
I have another theory about this decrease in sales, though - now that all of the carries in US are switching from subsidized contracts to bring-your-own phone and/or a leasing model, people are finally starting to realize just how much they have been paying for their phone hardware over the years, and it's made them a lot more price-conscious about their phone purchases.
should not invoke learning curves.
That's the worst. As the techie in the family (including the families of friends and distant relations), even though my job has nothing to do with computers other than I use them at work, I'm constantly bombarded with questions like why won't my internet work. Fine, I'll help, should take 20 seconds and save someone from a lot of misery. Wait, where did all of the settings pages go? Google for ten minutes, wrong version, google another ten minutes...an hour later the internet is working again. W.T.F. The only thing these people use a computer for are solitaire and chrome.
Google pulls the same crap. Yes, I can figure it out. Yes, I have much better things to do than learning a new interface for zero productivity gain. People have been using the same interface to drive a car for the last 100 years. If car companies operated like software companies, besides being all dead now we would have gone through joysticks, paddle wheels, slider buttons, push buttons, hand gestures, foot pedals, voice control and mice just to make a right turn. And the left turn would have yet another interface. And they would alternate between them on different models.
I bought a 6S. I wouldn't buy an Android other than the occasional one I have to buy for development reasons. The OS and the available apps are shit.
A lot of us have vowed we will never again buy an iOS based device. Because we have earlier devices that have been abandoned by the App Store.
Saying 'the OS and the available apps are shit' is really cheap words. What the fuck do you really mean?
I question Facebook, too. I can't imagine anybody in their right minds wanting to work in Menlo Park. IMO, the peninsula is the worst part of the Bay Area in which to work. From anywhere that mere mortals can afford to live, figure half an hour of driving at two miles per hour up 101, and an hour driving back in the evenings. That entire time is basically spent just going through Palo Alto.
And if you don't eat at FB's cafeteria (I assume they have one—I've never worked there, just near there), good luck finding any food at all. There are two tiny shopping plazas that have a couple of restaurants, none of which are walking distance from anywhere. The parking lots are full from about 11 to after 1, so you either drive around for ten minutes waiting for parking or drive a couple of exits up the 101.
Compare this with, for example, Apple, where there are probably a dozen restaurants within an easy walk of the main campus, and where you're right at the confluence of two major highways, one of which is usually passable at any given moment, and right next to De Anza, which is a viable city street alternate for 85 if you're heading south towards Los Gatos, Saratoga, or Santa Cruz or north towards Sunnyvale. (Unfortunately, Stevens Creek isn't a viable city street alternate, in my experience, thanks to very poorly timed traffic lights. Otherwise, Apple's location would be utterly amazing.)
But Google stealing people from Apple? Sure. It happens all the time. And startups steal people away from both of them. Honestly, Apple is a victim of its own success in many ways. Nobody goes to Apple thinking that they'll get stocks and options that will skyrocket in value these days, because the stocks aren't going that direction at any appreciable rate. And lots of the old talent made enough money off of AAPL to let them retire, so the company would have to be God's greatest gift to humanity if it wanted to retain most of those folks.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Apple is also the one advancing web browsers (WebKit),
Wasn't that the KDE web browser from Linux??
Isn't Swift the language that even Apple still isn't doing much substancial with? I bet the Swift compiler is still written in a variant of C.
There is not a single large computer company that anbody with a creative spirit would work in today. That's like working for an Office Equipment company. Hay! Cool! I have a job at Steelcase making modular cubicle compnents!!
Your anecdote of "everyone you know", has exactly what statistically relevance?
Good thing we have data....
http://download.cnet.com/blog/download-blog/apple-maps-vs-google-maps/
I've been putting pretty much all of my money into AAPL since 2002. It's worked out quite well for me.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The idea that Apple is mostly marketing comes from people that don't understand why most people consider Apple the best available tech products. Either the one they buy, or the one they aspire to buying. Because they don't understand it they assume it must be mostly marketing rather than technology. But it's neither, it's design.
No, that's marketing. Without the marketing, people will see the nice looking device in shops, notice it's practically twice the price of equivalent models and move on. Sure enough they would still get sold but nothing like the numbers they do. You'll notice a lot of iphone users aren't exactly the premium customer.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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